


Windblown

by lilactreesinwinter



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU, Drawing, Fluff, M/M, Phandom Fic Fests, Valentine's Day, pff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 09:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilactreesinwinter/pseuds/lilactreesinwinter
Summary: Excerpt:Another gust of wind hit Phil’s back, toppling him—hands still on his face—toward the boy. The boy caught his elbows and held him fast.“Hi,” said Phil. His voice sounded shaky. He had not stopped looking into the boy’s eyes.“Hi,” said the boy. “My name is Dan.”





	Windblown

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to **Templeofshame** for being an amazing beta reader and asking all the really good questions!

Phil drew pictures in the schoolyard every day. The other children swirled around him doing what small children usually do in schoolyards. Some children ran and ran—mostly boys, but there was a girl who could beat them all. Others climbed over the play structure or built elaborate homes beneath it, lining up leaf dishes on shelves made of sticks, and marking the outlines of furniture in the sand. Some drifted over against the fence and whispered secrets. And some watched Phil as he drew.

Sometimes Phil drew with markers on a length of coarse paper, spooled off a roll then pinned to the pavement with rocks, carefully placed to defeat the wind. Sometimes he drew on the pavement itself, sweeping brightly-coloured chalk against the rough surface. When it rained, the colours shimmered into a rainbow puddle that was as beautiful as the original drawing.

Phil drew for himself, but he also drew knowing he had an audience. His pictures told stories—the stories that somehow always crowded his head—of weird and wonderful and sometimes scary places. Even though he drew the stories for himself, he was pleased that other kids seemed to like them. Kids would come and go, as children do, but a few would usually watch, from beginning to end, crouching down to peer more closely at what he was doing. They would laugh at a funny animal or gasp at a scary-looking monster, but mostly they were respectfully quiet. Only very occasionally did some little boy or girl run by lobbing a fistful of wet leaves along with a jeer of “that picture's stupid”, or another similarly devastating playground insult.

Phil did play with the other kids sometimes. They all liked him well enough. But he baffled them. When he played house in the cosy space under the climbing bars, he would open a box to find the entire universe inside. When he joined in the games of catch and tag, he would stop in the middle to propose a completely different set of rules. So he found it easier to do something on his own, as his fancy took him, and let other children come to him. And he had the satisfaction that they did: he could be himself and they could enjoy it.

Seasons passed; new children came to the school and others moved on. Phil still drew in the schoolyard. His stories grew more elaborate and his drawing more skilful. His audience ebbed and flowed. He never paid attention to who was watching—he just felt the presence of the small crowd around him, shoving each other to keep muddy shoes off his paper and noisily hushing anyone who started to speak, lest they disturb his concentration. To Phil they were merely feet and sometimes knees, the shuffle of small humanity.

One day Phil thought he heard a voice float over the shuffle. He didn't quite catch what it said, just the disturbance rippling through the crowd. Phil smiled to himself, but he did not look up from carefully drawing the seventeenth arm on the figure before him.

On another day he heard the voice again, and he paused for just a moment to catch the words: “You make amazing rabbits.” There was some muttering in his audience, but Phil just drew another rabbit. He thought he liked the sound of that voice.

He heard the voice almost every time he drew now, high and clear and sweet, sending toward him remarks laced with superlatives and conviction. The compliments curled from his ears all the way around his heart and warmed him inside. But because he never looked up when he was drawing, he didn't know who the voice belonged to.

There was a morning in early autumn when a storm was coming and the skies were grey. A chilly wind was blowing, driving kids into doorways and dry brown leaves across Phil's paper as he patiently drew around them. A strong gust suddenly rolled through the yard, pushing one of the small rocks off the corner of the paper and right into the centre of the drawing. Phil clapped his hands to his mouth in horror as the rest of his stony anchors rattled and the paper started to curl and rip. Before he could move to save his picture, two small hands, tanned knuckles and blunt fingers, dropped down onto the edge of the paper, securing it once more to the ground.

“I will hold it so you don't have to.”

Phil looked up into the eyes of the owner of the voice.

A boy was crouched in front of him, with gangly limbs and big brown eyes and a disarray of sun-kissed brown curls. When he saw Phil looking at him, the boy's face burst into a grin that revealed huge dimples.

Phil wonderingly smiled back.

“I love your art,” the boy said. “I've been watching you forever. You're the best.”

Another gust of wind hit Phil's back, toppling him—hands still on his face—toward the boy. The boy caught his elbows and held him fast.

“Hi,” said Phil. His voice sounded shaky. He had not stopped looking into the boy's eyes.

“Hi,” said the boy. “My name is Dan.”

* * *

Now Dan was by Phil's side in the schoolyard every day. He had crossed into Phil’s strange world through the opening made by the wind, and he just stayed. Phil liked having him there. To Phil, the other children weren’t much different to the leaves on the pavement, scattering and bunching, largely indistinguishable. But Dan had a bright smile and a sure grip; Dan was always talking, with words bold and encouraging, words that made the world a bigger place than just Phil and his drawing. A world of Phil and his drawing—and Dan.

In the schoolyard, Dan drew too. His drawings were different to Phil's—funnier and darker and not as fantastical. He had not been drawing for so long, and Phil gave him loads of help with his technique. Dan's pictures took a long time, and many he didn't finish at all, stopping instead to watch Phil and cheer him on.

They drew together as well, covering the pavement with designs that chased and caught each other, painting colours that blended into new ones where they touched. Some children gathered around Dan in clusters that mirrored Phil's, but the biggest crowds were drawn to their shared drawings. The children could tell there was something special in those drawings and some looked up and noticed there was maybe something special in the partnership of Phil and Dan.

They were inseparable out of school too, over at each other's houses, pestering their mums to organise shared outings, to allow them to have sleepovers, to make them heaps of of pancakes for breakfast. Most of the time, they could be found in a treehouse in Phil's back garden. It was a perfect size for the two of them, surrounded on all sides by thick branches and overlooking the pond with its fish wriggling golden in the murky depths.

* * *

It was Valentine's Day. Dan had gone away on a trip with his family. It had not been long but Phil missed Dan—missed talking to him, missed drawing with him, missed sitting side by side on the pavement at school, missed Dan's warmth pressed against him in the treehouse as they played games and watched films on Phil's old tablet.

It was Valentine’s Day and his heart was full of longing. Phil decided to make Dan a valentine. He took a sheet of shiny paper, the nice kind, and drew a large heart. He edged it with lace carefully cut from tissue. He sketched designs of rainbows and sunbursts and beautiful flowers. Then Phil drew pictures of some of the favourite memories that he had of them together.

First Phil drew the snowiest day ever, when he and Dan had walked through deep snow in the dusk of afternoon, as the cold wind was blowing the last of the clouds from the sky. He drew Dan in his big floppy hat, lying down in the snow, and Phil lying next to him to look at the stars. He drew something that may have looked a little like him falling in love with Dan.

Phil drew the Halloween gathering at school, with him in his cat ears and whiskers and Dan in his bear costume, sat in the corner pressed close together, talking, holding their plates of food, spending time just with each other. He drew the knowledge that he only wanted to be spending time with Dan.

Next Phil drew the lounge with the big tv and comfy sofa, with him and Dan wearing 3D glasses, using them to examine each other’s hands and hair and faces up close. He drew how they looked at each other and not really at the film on the screen.

Finally Phil drew the big wheel. He had begged his mum to take him there with Dan and let them ride on it all by themselves. His excitement at sharing one of his favourite things had turned him into a lion, clawing at Dan with his mouth stretched wide to bite him. For a moment he had been scared to see Dan's eyes widen—but then Dan reached, so gently, to grasp Phil's claws, and brush a kiss against Phil's cheek. Phil drew how it felt when his heart had flipped over at Dan's touch.

Phil looked at the valentine he had drawn. It was as full as his heart. In careful letters, over his most precious memories, he etched the words that explained them all:

I love you.  
Happy Valentine's Day, Dan.

* * *

Phil and Dan continued to draw and continued to spend their time together. Their drawings still drew crowds at school, and sometimes a bit of the crowd would follow them home, even if most of them lived in the opposite direction. The treehouse where the boys spent so much of their time was set far back from the street, but sometimes through the leaves they could see kids lingering there, as though they wondered what Phil and Dan did together when they were not drawing for their audiences. They ignored them because they knew the kids could not get over the wall. When they heard the chatter of young voices, it was largely admiration for their drawings, or growing friendship among their admirers.

Once, the breeze seemed to carry the taunt, “Phil and Da-an, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.....” Dan leapt up from where they were sat over their video game inside the treehouse, fists balled and ready to shout. Phil pulled him back down, hands over fists; he shushed him and petted him, and reminded him there was no need to pay any mind, and no one could see them anyway. He proved the taunt true by kissing a fist until it uncurled.

They were safe from nosy children and insulated from schoolyard taunts in the private world they had built just for the two of them. Dan could smile and Phil could poke his curls; Phil could say something ridiculous and Dan could laugh. They talked about what they each would draw next, and what they would do when they grew up. They might fly around the world or go on stage or meet the royal family. They would do so many things, and they would do them together.

The treehouse had everything they needed—their games to play and films to watch, their drawing supplies, their cat ears and floppy hat. And, where Dan had carefully tucked it behind a box under the eaves, the valentine that Phil had drawn.

One day, when they were not in the treehouse, a wind storm came. The wind kicked up dust and rattled windows. It ripped a flag from its pole and knickers from a line and sent rubbish skittering into the gutters. It pushed white foam across the surface of the fish pond and made the trees shudder and wave their branches. It whooshed straight through the tree holding the treehouse. The treehouse shivered and bumped. And something knocked loose, improbably sliding from its place of safety, slipping through a crack widened by the unexpected change in the air.

The valentine, that Phil had made Dan with such love, and Dan had saved with such care, shook out of the treehouse, somersaulted over the garden wall, and blew into the street. It landed face-down at the feet of two kids who happened to be sauntering by. One reached to pick it up, catching the lacy edge before it sailed away again. She turned it over and showed her friend, who touched a tentative finger to the picture of two boys on the big wheel and traced the rainbow that led to two boys lying in the snow. There was no mistaking the style of the drawings, and no mistaking the name lettered in the centre of the heart. The girls looked at each other, and turned to toss the valentine back over the wall, vowing to keep the secret safe. But the wind grabbed it again and flung it down the street, where more curious eyes would find it.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback feeds the author!
> 
> [Find me on Tumblr.](https://phinalphantasy7.tumblr.com/)


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